1952 Invention of Sponge

Points taken, although I would note that when I said "less spin" on the 40mm ball, I meant it in the colloquial sense - spin is easier to deal with (which is a combination of surface speed and mass).

All in all, I guess it is a bit of a "what-if" scenario - my sense is that defense will be no more a viable strategy than it is now. Players today are too well-conditioned and their strokes hit a lot harder than before. 

I'm amazed at the speed of those hardbat drives in the videos I posted - way faster than I expected. At the elite level, they'll be even faster. I can't see any type of defense strategy being any more successful with hardbat, especially since they can't even rely on spin reversal in the same way.

 

Houshang Bazorgzadeh.  Hard bat player from the 60s and 70s in the US, originally from Iran, actually in the top 20 in the world at a point before he came to the US.  USATT Hall of Fame member.  Not a defender, that's for sure!  I played him a bunch of times, never came close to winning, he won a lot of points on third ball attack.  This was in early 70s.  A bit of a showman and a true gentleman.  I just went back upthread and watched the video of very young Dennis Neale that someone posted.  Houshang used to hit his forehand much the same way, elbow out, kind of a short quick stroke, it looks akward by today's standards.   Houshang was a short guy and he moved really quickly, served short -- always.  But quite similar in many ways, probably they were both at about the same level in the peak of their careers.  The ball came as you would expect, low, flat.  Hardbat weird and you kind of had to lift the ball to get it over the net, even though it was coming fast.  Houshang would keep that coming at you until you missed, and there was no easy way get your own effective attack off first.   The only other times I have seen balls like that since then are when I have played some old guys in my wife's hometown China who played with pips and sponge so thin it might have been harbat.  Two of them, late 60s, penholders, probably hadn't changed rubber since that film of Denis Neale was made, and they were still good. 2250-2300ish I would estimate, and when they were younger they had to have been a lot better than that.  I also saw a 15 year old girl who used more or less hardbat penholder in China, but didn't get a chance to play her.  Same thing.  Also thanks to RR for posting the video of Joo vs Chen.  Beautiful and I had not seen it before.   

And Hiroji Satoh was not the first player to use a sponge covered racket effectively.  In 1951, a player, last name Fritsch, won a number of tournaments in Europe using a racket with a sponge covering both sides.

But in general, sponge rubber at that time was viewed as uncontrollable and not particularly effective.  Ferenc Sido won the Men's World Singles Championship in 1953 using a hardbat, and Dick Miles reached the semifinals of the 1959 World Men's Singles at age 34 in 1959 also using hard rubber.

But after Zhuang Zedong's World Championships in 1961, 1963 and 1965 and the introduction of the slow, high throw but very spinny loop drive that stymied both hard rubber attackers and defenders alike, hard rubber was dead as an effective covering for international play.

And now, in 2016, look what we have.  A new crisis?  Sheer uncontrollability?  A marked improvement in the aesthetics of the sport?  

Don't blame me.  I wasn't playing competitive pong in 1959, and I'm too old and beat up to play competitive pong in 2016.  Bah humbug!